Former Visa MD Joins Blockchain Startup to Boost the One-Click, No-ID Payments Revolution

Blockchain e-commerce payments and ID platform Nuggets has nabbed a former managing director at Visa as it looks to accelerate the global roll-out of its platform.

Kevin Jenkins was appointed as MD U.K. and Ireland at Visa Europe in 2014 where he was responsible for directing Visa’s business operations in these markets. Now, in a significant move for the London-based blockchain startup, Jenkins has signed up to join the board as a non-executive director to boost the “one-click, no-ID” payments revolution.

According to an announcement from the company, Jenkins will help to establish Nuggets in Europe and lead business development.

Alastair Johnson, founder and CEO of Nuggets, said that Jenkins was a “true payments pioneer,” adding:

“He’ll help us build the relationships we need to roll out the product as quickly as possible. We’re thrilled that, after so long working on customer payment journeys at Visa, Kevin will be helping us bring even more fundamental and exciting change to the way people manage payments and ID.”

This announcement comes a month after Nuggets revealed it had entered into a partnership with QFPay in China. It’s one of the largest Chinese mobile payment product providers, which is also used by Asian e-commerce giants Alipay and WeChat Pay.

To date, QFPay has managed over 500 million mobile payment transactions worth more than $30 million. Asian merchants using QFPay will be able to benefit from Nuggets’ payments and identity features without having to share any ID, credit card details, or personal data at the more than one million of QFPay’s merchant partners.

Having held leadership positions at Visa and Mastercard, Nuggets are now hoping that Jenkins will be able to enhance customer payment journeys in the physical and digital world.

Jenkins said: “The current model of businesses holding personal information is broken. It needs fundamental change, study after study shows that customers are frustrated by the payments journey: the many steps they have to take, and the security fears.”

He adds that he believes that Nuggets has been able “to achieve a balance between security and convenience,” something the current payments industry has been lacking for decades.

While as Visa, Jenkins drove the adoption of contactless payments at U.K. merchants. This included a successful partnership with the Transport for London (TFL), which led to over a billion contactless journeys and more than 40 percent of all pay-as-you-go London transport journeys a day.